Bud Selig welcomed the Steroid Class of 2009, with all his usual enthusiasm, so while crickets continue to chirp at the office of the commissioner, let's take a look at America's favorite pasttime, figuring out who are the real bums of baseball.  We have more suspects than an Agatha Christie novel and no matter how many times Bud Selig polishes the ol' baseball apple, worms just keep popping out.

The exact moment needles, filled with illegal performance enhancing drugs, replaced Mom, Apple Pie & Ice Cream is in dispute though all evidence points to the late Eighties.  At first nobody seemed all that bothered a player like Lenny Dykstra added 45lbs. of muscle in an offseason, when his hardest workout consisted of lifting a six-pack. 

Then there was the whole home-run-fueled resurgance of baseball, after an unpopular strike, that filled the owner and player coffers to overflowing and brought a plague of stadiums extorted from taxpayers that makes greed too diminutive a word to use in this context.

The simple fact is the biggest part of the baseball equation got left behind in a choking, cloud of dust.  The fans.  The grand cathedrals, built on the back of their labor, housed the biggest frauds since Charles Ponzi got into finance. 

Then the most cherished, burnished and beloved records of giants who built the game of baseball, a birthright of all fans and inspiration to countless kids on sandlots for over a century, began to fall like dominos to players who previously didn't have a shot to get close let alone rocket by the records they were breaking.

And no matter how many of Bud Selig's horses or men try to duct tape this fraud, you can't put Humpty Steroid back together again.  The latest juicer caught with his hand in the steroid jar, David Ortiz, was quick to trot out what I like to call "The Magic Steroid Defense" wherein said juicer, using a less than brilliant strategy, tries to blame everything from milkshakes to global warming for causing his positive test.  To wit:

"Based on the way I have lived my life, I am surprised to learn I tested positive."

Surprised?  Really?  Think about it.  Everybody in a long chain is guilty of any player taking steroids.  First of all the guiltiest of them all is Bud Selig.  Get over yourself Bud, you knew, you knew all along, the owners know, because nobody but nobody injects their million dollar players with anything.  Not happening.  The team knows, that includes executives, GM's, managers, coaches, trainers, instructors, and bat boys.  Hey Bud, closing your eyes while trying to put out the five-alarm steroid fire with a Dixie cup of kerosene won't make you invisible, just stupid.

Running steroids out of baseball isn't just about health risks to players, it's about restoring the core value of the game to the only people who apparently still give a rat's ass about the game, Fans.  Greed is killing baseball.  The fractures, fissures and cracks across its foundation are growing while Bud fiddles like Nero.

This season it was Manny, Big Papi & a cast of 100.  All of whom should be reviled, by fans and players alike, for standing silent while they let guys like Bonds, McGuire, Sosa, Palmerio, and Clemens twist in the wind.  It's hypocrisy on a grand scale.  Big enough to make me want to puke every time they talk about any of these frauds fouling baseball's most hallowed ground, the field, let alone the Hall of Fame.

There is no middle ground Bud.  Remove the players, their records and rings from baseball.  Don't think reinstating Pete Rose will wash the stench from your steroid drenched hands and wallet.  The move is your's, the place is here, the time is now.